The Mind of Sherlock Holmes
by elphabathedelirious32
Summary: Sherlock has been to a lot of psychologists in his life, and he's been handed a lot of diagnoses. None have ever approached what he really is, because no one really knows. Chapter 6: Sherlock's father intervenes.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: This is my first foray into the Sherlock-verse, though I've been reading for a while now, and am an enormous fan of the show. I apologize for any Americanisms that have slipped in—that's where I'm from and where most of the characters I usually write are from, so please point out and forgive. Sherlock's mother was surprisingly fun to create and write—I'll likely use her again in the future. Let me know if you enjoy her as much as I do. Sherlock's therapist is a composite of some therapists I had when I was a child (because I refused to go to school because it was boring, interestingly enough) and some elementary school teachers are there, too. I don't really know what this is—I just wondered where Sherlock got his diagnosis, since I really don't think he'd see a psychologist of his own volition and, being high-functioning, would probably not have been diagnosed with conduct disorder as a child. The obvious conclusion would be from himself. **

Sherlock decided that he was a sociopath (the first time) when he was ten. This was when his dog died. Mycroft, fifteen, cried a few suspect tears. Sherlock was simply annoyed that he had to stand in the rain while he watched his father and brother bury the dog (his mother? She was elsewhere. She didn't have to do boring things. She was probably doing something fun in her study, like an experiment, or reading). Sherlock waited until the dog was in the ground, glanced at Mycroft's face for a model of a suitably stricken expression, made a strangled noise, as if overcome with emotion, and ran off.

As predicted, he found his mother in her study, absorbed in, alternately, Tolstoy and in writing a treatise on the degeneration of bone under UV lights of varying intensity, mimicking sunlight. There were, of course, six humerii laying on tables across the room, some under UV lights and some in the window.

"Mum," said Sherlock, "What is it if someone can't feel badly about things?"

"Mmm. That's a sociopath, I think," said his mother. "Why?"

"No reason." Sherlock wandered over to examine the bones. "Are these human?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"Unfortunately, one cannot just use human bones for experiments, Sherlock."

"Why?"

"Some people are superstitious and don't like their remains, or their relatives', for science."

"You should use a fresh bone, though shouldn't you?"

"Yes, ideally."

"Have you tested flesh decomposition under the lights?"

"No…" Sherlock's mother looked thoughtful. "I wonder if animal flesh would suffice?"

"Probably."

"Ah, well. Ethics." His mother smiled at him and gave a delicate shrug.

"Thanks, Mummy," said Sherlock, wrapping his arms around her waist. His mother was the only person to whom the small boy freely showed physical affection, unless punching Mycroft counted.

"Aren't you supposed to be burying the dog, Sherlock?"

"Done."

"All right. Have a good day, dear. And try to be nice to your brother; he was unaccountably attached to that idiotic dog. Distract him with something, would you?"

"Okay."

Of course, Sherlock already knew he needed to distract Mycroft, so he could dig up the dog and start his experiment.

…

Of course, he got caught, and there was a good deal of unrest in the Holmes house that night. Sherlock was confined to his room, pacing; Mycroft had locked himself in his room to sulk and try to make Sherlock feel guilty; Mr. Holmes was at table, alone, trying to decide whether or not he was more angry or confused by Sherlock's behavior in particular and by his younger son in general; and Mrs. Holmes was knocking on her younger son's door.

"Sherlock? May I come in?"

"Sure," came the boy's muffled voice, a little tear-stung.

She went inside. Sherlock had stopped pacing and sprawled on the bed. His mother went to him and began to pat his back. He squirmed.

"What's wrong?"

"Dad 'n Mycroft hate me."

"They do not."

"Mycroft said so and Dad agrees, I can _tell_."

"They do _not _hate you, Sherlock."

"Dad said I was an animal, I heard…"

Sherlock's mother wondered for a moment how the boy had possibly heard that, then glanced at the vent in his floor and resolved the question for herself.

"Your father is an idiot," she said.

"Really?" asked Sherlock, looking up.

"Sometimes, yes," said his mother. She made a deduction. "Sherlock, dear, did you ask about sociopaths the other day because you think you are one?"

The child looked at her, curly hair rumpled and eyes wide, feline, cold. "Yes."

"Why on earth would you think that?"

"Mycroft cried about the dog. I didn't. I dug him up…"

"And?"

"I still don't understand why that was wrong."

"Mm. Because there's nothing morally wrong with it."

"Dad and Mycroft don't agree."

"Yes, Sherlock, but in addition to the facts that your brother is very good at faking tears and your father is inordinately sensitive sometimes, neither of them is a scientist. Sherlock, you were curious. You did an experiment. You didn't mean to hurt anyone. In fact, I think you were trying to help me, weren't you?"

Sherlock nodded.

"See, there. Not a sociopath at all."

…

Even so, Sherlock's father insisted that they take the boy to the doctor. Sherlock listened at the door while his parents conferred with the psychologist.

"…don't diagnose antisocial personality disorder in children…"

"…better…hell not…"

"…dug up the dog!"

"…has he…with live animals?"

"No—"

"Not that we've seen."

"Oliver!"

"Emily, you know he isn't…"

"They said the same about me!"

Sherlock heard the psychologist trying to calm his parents and sensed that the conversation was winding down, so he darted to the corner and pretended to play.

His parents emerged a moment later, and his mother, who knew how her son played, winked at him, walked over, and ruffled his curls.

"Your turn, Sherlock," she said. She leaned down to whisper in his ear. "Play nice, and I'll get you an ice cream and a new chemical later."

…

The psychologist was a pleasant woman, about fifteen years older than his mother, with greying hair and square spectacles. She wore loose, bright clothing of the kind his aunt wore in photos of his mother's 1960s adolescence (Emily Holmes had never quite been a flower child like her younger sister Lydia; free love was not something she understood, for she was really very like her son, down to the dark curls, pale eyes, proneness to boredom, and asexuality, though she'd become, of necessity, rather successful at disguising the latter two traits).

"Sherlock," the therapist began, costume jewelry clunking, "do you know why you're here?"

_I dug up the dog_, Sherlock thought, _and my father and brother are irrational_, but he shook his head mutely and waited, curious, to hear the reason Dr. Noble would give.

"You're here because your parents are…worried about you, and because they love you."

_Oh. Boring_.

"Do you love them, Sherlock?"

_Mum, yes. Sometimes Father._

"Yeah," he said, without hesistating. "Yes. Dad and Mycroft hate me, though." _Bid for sympathy; demonstrated normal concern. _

"I can assure you that that is untrue," said Dr. Noble. She followed this with a hideously boring speech about curiousity, mistakes, forgiveness, love, etc., during which Sherlock had only to nod and look contrite, then relieved. _Easy_.

Then: "Do you have any friends, Sherlock?"

_Oh, dear_.

"Mummy," said Sherlock, playing the naïf, "and Mycroft sometimes, and there's a boy called Geoff I talk with at school, and a girl called Anne who likes me."

"Mm. Do you like Geoff and Anne?"

"They're all right." Sherlock's instinct was to call them stupid, because they _were_, but he suppressed it and said, "We're not really interested in the same things."

"Oh? What interests _you_?"

"Decomposition, and poisonous plants, and disguises," blurted Sherlock. The psychologist's jaw had dropped slightly. "And. Um. The game. With the kicking—oh, football. That."

He was pretty sure that was what the game was called.

"Those are some unusual interests, Sherlock."

"Not football," Sherlock tried. The psychologist gave him a look.

"I'm unusual," Sherlock admitted.

"I'm getting that impression." She smiled. "Decomposition?"

"My mum's a forensic pathologist."

Dr. Noble looked surprised. "I thought she was a novelist and a professor of literature."

"She is," said Sherlock. "All of them. My dad was a surgeon. Now he's in government. Just that."

"And your brother is fifteen, and headed to Oxford in a few years, by the looks of it?"

"Yes. He's very bright but very boring."

"Mmhmm. Are you bored often, Sherlock?"

Since they were the only two in the room and she was hardly talking to herself, Sherlock wondered why she kept using his name.

"Yes, Dr. Noble," he said back.

"What do you do to stop being bored?"

_Anything_.

"I dunno. Play a game, Imagine something." _She knows about the dog, give her something. She'll get suspicious. _"Sometimes I do something—to get Dad's and Mycroft's attention."

Dr. Noble's eyes did something and Sherlock wondered if that hadn't been _too _much insight for a ten-year-old. Distraction was required. Sherlock made his lower lip tremble, screwed up his face, and attempted to cry by exerting facial pressure around his nose to induce tears.

"I just—Dad likes Mycroft, and they talk together and go out together, and I never get to go, and I was trying to help Mum so she and Dad would be proud of me, and do an experiment to be smart like Mycroft, and now he and Daddy _HATE_ me!"

Sherlock had really gotten the fake tears to flow now, taking a leaf from his brother's playbook, so much that some of the tears might have been real. And it felt good, whether from release or from the satisfaction of tricking the psychologist he could never be sure.

And that, more than anything, was the problem. Sherlock Holmes could never go back and deduce whether or not he bad become a sociopath or whether he was born one—or if, even, it was still just a façade, bricked up from behind and made part of the initial structure, and extraordinarily well-developed persona.

He was never ordinary, after all, at anything.


	2. Chapter 2

**Note: If Sherlock's about 30 in the show, then this is set in aboouuut 1990. It was only in 1991 that Robert Hare published the Psychopathy Checklist, which attempted to place greater emphasis on personality traits rather than antisocial behavior in diagnosing antisocial personality disorder, so we'll say that that research has already been published. **

Dr. Noble told Sherlock's parents that she thought their son simply suffered from an overabundance of intelligence and a slight deficiency in social skills and emotional maturity.

"Not Asperger's, then, or high-functioning autism?" asked his father.

Emily Holmes shot her husband a scathing _don't-be-stupid _look that must have been extraordinarily heritable. "Our son is _not _autistic," she hissed. "Have you even seen a diagnostic criterion for autism in your life?"

"Emily," said Oliver Holmes, too calmly, "don't be rude."

"She is correct, though," said Dr. Noble, who clearly found the situation very awkward. "Sherlock is able to read most social cues, if he's paying attention. The only thing wrong with Sherlock is that he is intelligent enough to be very bored much of the time, but he lacks the emotional maturity to handle his boredom by directing it into acceptable outlets. He is unable to relate to children his age on their intellectual level, because he is so advanced, but he is also unable to relate to them emotionally, because he is very immature in that regard. Such a disparity is not uncommon in gifted children."

Emily Holmes shot another look at her husband.

"I'd love to see his IQ score," said Dr. Noble, oblivious to the seemingly telepathic communiqués flying between Emily and Oliver.

"No tests," said Oliver, suddenly. Emily smiled.

"And score is implied by quotient," she muttered under her breath.

"I'm sorry?"

"IQ stands for intelligence quotient. A quotient is a number. It implies score—it is a score. So IQ score is redundant, like PIN number."

"Oh…" Dr. Noble tried to gather herself. She focused on Oliver. "Any testing is at your discretion, of course, but a number might be valuable…"

"No tests," Emily confirmed. "Anyhow, Sherlock wouldn't do it."

"It might benefit him to -"

"What, sit and be bored out of his head for six hours? Boredom is emotional torture, Dr. Noble; I'm not quite sure you're capable of realizing how keenly Sherlock suffers it. IQ tests are hideously boring. He's already forced to endure the monotony of seven hours of school five days of the week, and then his homework, and I simply will not force him to cope with anything more. As you've said, he isn't very good at it, and I hardly think increasing the load will help him learn."

Listening at the door, Sherlock grinned. His mother knew him well; he would have refused to take the IQ test. Already several of his teachers had made the same request, for markedly different reasons. One thought Sherlock a prodigy; another wondered whether he wasn't developmentally delayed. Sherlock and his parents had refused all tests. Mycroft had never been tested either, and the Holmes parents were well aware that if one brother were tested, the other would insist on the same test, and god help them all if the boys' scores weren't effectively identical.

Anyway, Sherlock was rather pleased that nothing was apparently wrong with him other than being unable to relate to his peers, since he didn't especially _want _to relate to his peers. Though it would be nice if they would stop calling him names and getting in his way in order to make their absurd little points, and he couldn't deny to himself that eventually the isolation began to feel a little cold, and the words a little sharp, like pinpricks.

A lot of pinpricks. But they didn't really make him sad anymore (no one but his mother knew, but when he first started school he would sometimes come home and cry out of frustration and sadness that he was so different and the others didn't like him and couldn't understand him, even though he had tried, at first, to be friends…his mother told him never to be sad about being different, and never to stoop to their level, which he might have taken more thoroughly to heart than it was meant). Their taunts just made him angry now, knowing that it was all because he was smart and they couldn't see his value. So he called them insects in his head, because a mosquito's bite was hardly offensive, only natural. Annoying, and reason enough to spray on a protective shield against further bites, but nothing worth crying over.

Of course mosquitoes also carry malaria. But Sherlock was fairly certain that one couldn't get malaria from a metaphor.

Anyway, Sherlock, being Sherlock, had been reading the psychology books in the waiting room, and had found the DSM, in which he was thoroughly absorbed. According to the DSM-III, Sherlock knew that he did not have traditional antisocial personality disorder. But he was ten years old, so when he finished with that and moved on to back issues of _Psychology Today_, he didn't know better than to assume that the information therein was as valid as that in any psychological journal. So when he read an article on sociopathy (so called even though it used diagnostic criteria for psychopathy and antisocial personality disorder), he was somewhat alarmed. Scanning the traits, he found familiarity at every turn. He certainly wasn't a juvenile delinquent, but many other characteristics fit, although he was also fairly sure that all ten-year-olds led parasitic lifestyles, so perhaps he shouldn't count that. Still, he could be charming to adults, but didn't really like people at all, so wasn't that superficial? And he didn't feel as though he possessed much empathy. He was definitely chronically bored and in need of constant stimulation. He could lie. Was a grandiose sense of self a symptom if one was genuinely brilliant? Sherlock thought about that a moment. Oh. Well, he was fairly sure that he really was brilliant. He skimmed the page. _Related Characteristics: May be contemptuous of those who try to understand/help them, such as family and therapists. _Well, he was definitely contemptuous of Dr. Noble…_Disregards social norms and even laws_. And that was certainly true. Though he'd never yet broken a law…

"Sherlock," his father said, voice cutting through his son's intense focus. "Sherlock, it's time to go."

His mother took the tome from her son's hand and glanced at what he'd been reading. Walking to the car, she took her son's hand in her own and squeezed it, then ruffled his hair gently.

"You are capable of great things, Sherlock," she whispered into his ear. "Great things, and great love."

He wanted to believe her. But he wasn't so sure he could.


	3. Chapter 3

The next time Sherlock was made to see a psychologist was at school. His teachers were concerned that he was alienating the other students, that he often refused to go to school, and that he did not appear to exert any effort, though his marks were quite good, and that he seemed too utilitarian for anyone's tastes. He was twelve years old.

It was two years or so after the publication of Robert Hare's work on psychopaths, and if Sherlock were ever to have been diagnosed as a sociopath, this would have been it. Unfortunately, or fortunately, school psychologists tend either to be extremely competent bleeding hearts and lovers of children, or extremely incompetent and incapable of sustaining an independent practice—or an extremely incompetent bleeding heart lovers of children operating under the delusion of competence. Sherlock's school employed one of the third type.

"So, Sherlock," she said, smiling widely at him as he walked into her office, which smelled overpoweringly of vanilla and was painted an absurd shade of aubergine, "How are you? Have a seat."

Sherlock sat on her little couch. She perched on a chair across from him.

"I'm fine," he said. He already knew that she was unmarried but had recently broken up with either a serious boyfriend or a fiancé, (she'd been crying recently, the picture on her desk was too small for the frame, indicating that it had replaced another, and she fiddled with her ring finger but there was no line there, meaning she hadn't been married because she hadn't had an engagement or wedding ring on long enough), lived alone but often visited her parents (three keys on the ring on her desk, one to a car, one clearly to a flat, as it was labeled with the number, the other more likely to a house; she had pancake syrup on her collar, but several empty boxes for frozen lunches and Egg McMuffin wrappers in the bin, meaning she didn't cook for herself, so her mum or dad had probably made her breakfast on a visit as she had no significant other), and had a cat (white fur on her stockings). He had come up with three possible lines to terrify or hurt her, but decided that would be counterproductive. "How are you?"

"I'm quite well, thank you." She beamed at him. He wondered whether one could asphyxiate on odor of vanilla.

"Now, Sherlock," she said, putting her hands on the table between them and making that I'll-be-straight-with-you face that adults use when they're trying to get children to confide in them, "Your teachers tell me you're having some problems at school, with the other children."

Again, the problem of plausibility. She'd not believe him if he denied it flat out. So, some of the truth. But what would get her to _leave him alone_?

"I don't really have many friends here, but it's all right. I have friends at home."

Since this was Sherlock's third school, and some distance from his family's house, this was entirely believable.

"Oh, you do? Can you tell me about them?"

"Uh, you know, there's Amy. Um. She likes to draw. Um. She draws the animals in my science books." Sherlock thought this was a clever invention. Making up the drawing wasn't a detail an ordinary child would think to add to a lie. "And Ella, she likes to make up stories." Also not untrue. Ella was a friend of Mycroft's and an accomplished liar, not unlike the Holmes brothers. "Timothy down the road. We don't talk a lot but sometimes we play football." He had learned what football was since seeing his first therapist.

"That all sounds very nice, Sherlock, and I'm glad to hear it, but I wonder why it is you have such problems relating to the children here when it seems that you don't have the same difficulties at home."

"Given that the other children are the variable here it follows that they are the problem," Sherlock said before he could stop himself.

The counselor blinked a few times in an attempt to process his words. "Did your mother tell you that?" she asked.

"No," said Sherlock, "but she would likely agree."

"Uh-huh…um…"

"Can I go?"

She tried to collect herself. "Not yet, dear, I have a few more questions and then you can go, all right? I'm happy you're so eager to return to class, though."

"I'm really not."

"Oh?"

"Yes. It's boring."

"What class do you have?"

"Mathematics."

"Oh, so you prefer your other courses?"

"No. They're all boring, but mathematics is the worst of a bad lot."

She blinked again. "So, uh, which is the best?"

"Science. It is absurdly nonspecific and juvenile, but at least-" Sherlock stopped himself before he went on to say _it doesn't make me want to pull out my brains through my nose_, since that seemed like an ill-advised thing to tell a therapist.

"What about your literature and history courses, then, Sherlock?"

"I've read all the books and if I haven't I can finish them before everyone else has read the first chapter, besides which I always know what's going to happen anyway, and Miss Ryan doesn't like it. And history isn't even taught properly. Mummy said and she would know."

"Well, people can have different opinions, of course, but perhaps we should listen to those people whose job it is to teach us-"

"_We _shouldn't do anything. Don't patronize me or my mother. We're both smarter than you are, _and _Mummy's a grown-up, _and _she has three degrees to prove it, _and _she doesn't live alone with two cats and visit her parents all the time because she's lonely and can't cook!"

That marked the beginning of the end of Sherlock's time at that school, which was good because he hadn't liked it anyway. His departure was hastened by the fact that his mother had a similar outburst in a meeting with the headmaster, ending with a shouted, "you ignorant sod." After that, Sherlock was taught at home for a few months until a place could be found for him in a new school, and those months were the happiest time of his young life.

His father was not entirely pleased with this exclusivist "and, frankly, childish" behavior on the parts of both Sherlock and Emily, and Sherlock's presence at home for those two months was a daily reminder of what he considered a failure of his authority and Emily's parenting. The fact that she considered this quite the success did not help much. Due to these circumstances, the happiest period of Sherlock's life also marked the introduction of a new era of domestic tension in the Holmes household to which, quite uncharacteristically, Sherlock was oblivious.

Mycroft, of course, was not, and as someone capable of blending in to normal society he was none too pleased with Sherlock either. He was nineteen that year, halfway through his course at Oxford, and had plenty of people he called friends, sons and daughters of good old families and families of rising importance, and the newly exceptional children of the unremarkable. There was no place in Mycroft's world for Sherlock, twelve and brilliant and troublesome. Nevermind that Mycroft himself had only managed to reach a kind of equilibrium at sixteen, before which time he was much fatter, much less socially adept, and not even quite as shining and forward in his brilliance as his younger brother, capable of great natural charm, was. Mycroft's own charm was not itself a gift; he was a great actor and had missed his calling as a poker player. But Mycroft had always been able to fake it, to pretend to care about football or pop singers or the relative hotness of unattainable actresses; to substitute the much longer or even foreign word that first came into his head with a duller synonym, to go back and write out the maths work that he had done in an instant as though it had taken him the six steps it was supposed to. Sherlock—Mycroft wasn't sure if he couldn't or wouldn't, but he certainly wasn't, and their mother was _not _helping.

Sherlock, in school, had developed a fantastic hatred for maths because nothing was ever explained properly or put into context and Sherlock didn't care enough about empty numbers to research or figure it out himself, so he was, for someone who understood chemistry and logic puzzles like breathing, quite terrible at his algebra (which, he would delightedly tell you, came from the Arabic, al-jabr, see? And then refuse to learn how to factor binomials because why on earth should you multiply it by two?) Emily, who herself hated maths, was allowing this behavior to persist and letting Sherlock do frankly Frankensteinian experiments with animal speciments and more electric current than a child should be allowed anywhere near. And if Oliver complained, she pacified him by making Sherlock dissect and label every part of a sheep brain and then talk about Galen until his father grinned at his son's apparent interest in neuroscience, ruffled his dark curls, and headed to his own study.

Clearly it was left to Mycroft to resolve things, since his parents were acting like his brother was a show monkey, until his father would periodically remember that Sherlock should have been in "real school" and get angry with their mother and Emily would make it worse by being blatantly…whatever undiagnosed thing Sherlock was.

These unfortunate circumstances led to the first, but hardly the last, time that Mycroft kidnapped Sherlock.


	4. Chapter 4

Sherlock was actually surprisingly difficult to kidnap, and not because of his intelligence, because he rarely left the house. It took Mycroft a week to plan and another week to finally execute, just waiting for his brother to go off on his own. Finally, Sherlock felt the need to explore beyond the grounds on his own, having grown restless. Mycroft had set up surveillance at the edges of the grounds, and in the places he'd found along the hedge and the fence where Sherlock had clearly escaped before. When he saw his younger brother coming on one of the cameras that he had requisitioned from the university's Centre for Media Production, it was a simple matter to discern which way he was going, and to be waiting in the hedge with a little ether, unofficially requisitioned with no intention of returning from the university's chemistry department. And it was an even simpler matter to hide in the hedge, wait until the younger boy was most of the way through, reach over and cover his mouth and nose with the ether-soaked cloth, then pick him up and carry him to a secondary location. Which, okay, fine, was just a shed on the edge of the Holmes property. But Mycroft was only nineteen, so he was doing fairly well with his resources under the circumstances.

Mycroft would never admit it, not ever, but while he was waiting in the shed for his brother to come to, he experienced what could only be called pangs of remorse. He had eliminated all other possibilities; he was actually feeling guilt and a little apprehension, even a tinge of reprehension, about the potential consequences of putting the twelve-year-old out with ether. After all, Sherlock was quite small, and, like Emily and Mycroft himself, often reacted a little strangely to medications, e.g. Benadryl making both boys hyperactive rather than drowsy, or Emily's general imperviousness to sleeping medications, which had on occasion been quite useful (the excitement of her life was an outlier in academia, to say the least. A very, very far-flung outlier. Before taking her current post, she'd been a bioarchaeologist. A very interesting bioarchaeologist…).

But Sherlock began to come around soon enough, fidgeting and moaning a little, and finally sitting up fully conscious and glaring death by slow torture at Mycroft.

"You _kidnapped _me," he said.

"Come off of it, Sherlock, we're in the shed."

"You _drugged _me. With _ether_. That you _stole_. And you better not have stolen it from me." Sherlock seemed more concerned about the potential violation of his chemical supplies than with the fact that his brother had knocked him out and was now holding him in an abandoned shed.

On their property. But still.

"No, I took it from the university."

"Good. Because if you'd taken it from me I'd have to tell Mummy."

Mycroft took this as a good sign, implying as it did that Sherlock was not going to tell either of their parents about the kidnapping. Which was not entirely unexpected—in fact, Mycroft had been depending upon it. The Holmes boys had something of a treaty in terms of informing their parents. They carried on their illicit activities—separately or in regards to each other—without their parents' knowledge. Fair was fair, and there were consequences when one infringed upon the other. But certain things—the theft of Sherlock's chemicals or intentionally damaging one of Mycroft's delicately cultivated relationships—would be brought to the attention of Holmes _mere et pere_.

"Yes. Mummy. That's rather what I wanted to discuss with you, Sherlock."

"If you wanted to 'discuss' her, you might have just come to my room while she was out."

"You know you wouldn't have listened. I needed to garner your attention first. I assume I now have it?"

Sherlock groaned and ran his hands, too big for his wiry arms, through his mop of curls, frazzled with summer sweat. There was a smudge of dirt on his right cheek, near the muscle that was currently twitching in intense annoyance. Mycroft was, for an instant, nearly overcome with affection for the smaller boy, remembering his infancy and infuriating toddlerhood.

"Yes." Sherlock spat irritably, "you have. So use it while it lasts. I'm sure you know how easily bored I am."

"I think we all know that, rather to our detriment." Mycroft heaved a melodramatic sigh and began in earnest. "Sherlock, you may not have noticed, but since your leaving school—in point of fact, since your first visit to therapy—our parents have not been at ease with one another."

"What?" Sherlock had, for an instant, what Mycroft thought was a look of genuine surprise and hurt on his face. Then it passed.

"They're getting a divorce?"

"Don't be dull, Sherlock, of course they're not, Father has a political career to consider and Mummy's family would be horrified. I'm sure you've gathered that they married for intellectual compatibility rather than love or sexual attraction—in fact, I'm not sure Mummy is capable of feeling sexual attraction-"

"Shut up, Mycroft, _eeeeuw!_" Sherlock was not an ordinary twelve-year old by any means, but there was only so far he could go beyond his years, and the idea of his parents' sexual life was pretty much the limit.

"—at any rate, they're not going to divorce, unless Mummy becomes particularly defiant and enraged against both Father and her family at once. But she's not angry with Father, he's angry with her, so I don't think that's a concern."

"What are you talking about, he's angry with her?"

"He's furious that she's encouraging what he views as your abnormal and elitist behavior, your refusal to abide by the normal rules of society."

"But society is an invention made up by idiots and composed of even bigger idiots who insist on following their pretend rules!"

"Yes, well, that may be true, but we must at least pretend."

Sherlock shot Mycroft the most infuriated look the older boy had ever seen. The impotent rage and profound, terrifying ennui lighting up the small, delicate face of a child transfigured Sherlock for a moment into a hybrid, something beyond a man peeking out from the eyes of something not even a man. Mycroft was transfixed and mildly nauseated.

"I'm _not _going to pretend, Mycroft," said Sherlock in a furious, low voice. "I'm _never _going to pretend. You can't make me lie and pretend I'm not better than them. I _am _better than them, and I don't have to behave for them and follow their rules like a puppet, I _won't_, they hate me even when I try because they _know_, they smell it on me, and I'm not going to humiliate myself for them any longer! I _am different _and it's no use making believe I'm not. So _there_."

Mycroft was, for the first time since he had learned to speak, wordless. But only for a moment.

"Yes," he said. "You are."

"What's wrong with me?" His brother's voice was quiet but not pained. It was defiant.

"I'm not a psychologist."

"Psychologists are idiots. _What do you think is wrong with me?_"

Mycroft looked away. "What do you think is wrong with you?"

"I asked first."

"Humour me."

"I'm a prodigy," said Sherlock. Monster. Genius. Freak of nature. He knew Mycroft knew the denotations and connotations of the word and that he meant them all.

"You are. We all are."

"You're thinking another word for me."

Sherlock was avoiding his eyes as he spoke.

"No, I'm not."

"Yes, you are."

"Sherlock-"

"Say it."

"You want me to say it because you believe it yourself."

"What if I do?"

"I don't think-"

"But you did think it, Mycroft, you did."

"Sherlock, don't."

"Say. It. Say what you were thinking."

Mycroft waited for Sherlock to glance up, looked his brother in the eye. "Sociopath."

Sherlock nodded. "Thank you."

Neither brother spoke for a moment. The air in the shed felt stuffy and hot. Mycroft wiped a little at his brow with the back of a long hand. Sherlock drummed his fingers on his chair.

"Can I go now?" he asked.

Mycroft nodded distantly, because he couldn't think of a way to make his brother talk. He couldn't think what to say to a child who either was a sociopath or desperately wanted to be one.

Sherlock was at the door before he hit upon on.

"Sherlock," Mycroft called quietly. The boy turned, afternoon sun framing him in the doorway.

"What." Flat intonation, irritated.

"You're in pain, brother. Why?"

"No, Mycroft," Sherlock said, looking him very deliberately in the eye, "I'm not."


	5. Chapter 5

Sherlock _was. _He was in pain and he had been for a very long time, but his saturated neurons were habituated to it now, so it was like feeling nothing at all.

The equivalent of this, with serotonin rather than the large, abstract idea of psychological pain, is one theory of how serial killers are made. Fortunately, Sherlock was only a little low on serotonin, his neurons thirsty for it, taking it back into themselves greedily, leaving him a little compulsive, a little sad, a little anxious if by anxious one meant overly alert, constantly alert, buzzing on adrenaline and cortisol and thinkthinkthinking all the time, unable to sleep for the bees flying busily through his brain.

(Of course, bees, John would think much later, the work is everything for them, for him. They see and smell and know things in the air, things we mistake for simple oxygen-nitrogen-carbon dioxide. But it's all of them, not just one, all working together, none of them being _stupid_. Of course, bees).

He was still twelve. He was still being schooled at home. He was growing careful about it when his father was about, though, not bringing it up, changing the subject when his mother flaunted what they were doing in front of his father, like an affair.

But it wasn't an affair. It was homeschooling, not a betrayal of a marriage. His mother wasn't having an affair. He knew because he knew the signs of one. He knew the signs of one because his father was having one, and he didn't know what to do.

Just as he had missed the first signs of distance and unease between Holmes _mere et pere_, Mycroft was missing this. As Sherlock loved his mother, desperately, with the single-minded focus of a much younger child, Mycroft admired their father. It was of course quite different; Mycroft loved their father deeply but recognized this as a weakness and therefore concealed it, instead seeking only to earn praise at whatever cost. He cherished his mother too, of course, but had begun to treat her as Oliver had recently, since taking up politics, as though she needed protection, as though she stayed at home cooking all day.

Well, she had the Crock-Pot on, certainly, only it was in her laboratory, not the kitchen, and it had a human skull in it, not stew. Not edible stew, anyway.

Not that Sherlock hadn't, just once, taken a spoonful of the water that kept company with the bones and other bits. Because when else did one get that kind of opportunity, and didn't everyone, really, deep down, want to _know_?

They probably didn't, but Sherlock wasn't everybody, and his one qualm about breaking the greatest of human taboos was his ex post facto fear that he might have caught a prion disease, not an entirely unreasonable worry in Britain at the time. Of course, this worry was sublimated almost immediately into a period of deep fascination with prion diseases, much to his mother's delight.

But the fact of the matter was that Oliver Holmes was having an affair and Sherlock knew it but what he didn't know was what to _do _about it.

He was sprawled on his bed, algebra book discarded on the floor in boredom, frustration, and disgust an hour earlier, thinking instead about the problem of his father. Sherlock's usual method of solving such problems—an awkward familial tangle brought to light by his deductions—went as follows:

Either a) blurt it out, which he did most of the time;

Or b), if he wanted to check his accuracy or didn't quite understand what he'd sensed, ask Mycroft.

But he knew this was serious and he knew he was right and blurting it out would hurt Mummy, but he couldn't ask Mycroft because Mycroft was an arsehole and would probably tell Father that Sherlock knew and Father already didn't like Sherlock so much at the moment so that would be rather unpleasant as well.

What happened when people had affairs?

Divorce, usually, when they were brought to light publicly. Although not usually with politicians, like Father. So what were the consequences? Why would Mummy be upset? Now that he thought about it, there wasn't necessarily a reason. Perhaps that wouldn't be the outcome. Mummy was like him and _he _wouldn't be upset, except about the lying, because _that _was insulting. Although perhaps Father hadn't lied, not explicitly, and if you wanted to know something you should ask. So maybe it would be fine. Maybe Mummy knew and didn't care.

Then there was sex but Mummy and Father didn't seem to have very much of it, from what Mycroft said. Mycroft had also said that they wouldn't get divorced if Mummy was mad at Father, and in affairs the person who wasn't having one was the person who got mad, so that was alright.

Settled in his mind, Sherlock went down to dinner with an easy heart.

…

Saturday dinner at the Holmes house was an extravagant affair, with Mummy's parents invited, guests of Father's for work, a dress code, well-thought- out wine pairings, and a menu that would put any restaurant to shame.

That's really all that needs to be said on the subject.

...

After the disastrous dinner to end all disastrous dinners, Sherlock sought out his mother, finding her throwing things furiously about, seemingly at random, in the bedroom.

"Mummy," said Sherlock. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to, I didn't think you'd be upset."

"You didn't—" his mother stared at him, incredulous, her features momentarily flashing with anger. "No, of course you didn't, did you. Of course not. It's all right, dear, come here." Emily Holmes took her son into her arms and they stayed there, silent, neither crying, for a very long time.

…

A week later, Oliver Holmes, without his wife's knowledge or consent, took Sherlock to another doctor.


	6. Chapter 6

"Why did you lie about your father to your mother, Sherlock?"

"I didn't."

"Didn't you think about how that would hurt your parents?"

"I _didn't_."

"You didn't think that saying something so hurtful would hurt their feelings and even their marriage?"

"I didn't _lie_."

…

Sherlock and Doctor Compton had some differences of opinion. In the guise of "bonding" with his son to repair whatever damage had "led Sherlock to go to such lengths for attention," Oliver took Sherlock to Dr. Compton's office every Tuesday.

Sherlock did not bother to point out that this, of course, was actually lying to his mother. He also did not bother to tell his mother, because the rage in his father's face and the sorrow in his mother's frightened him. He was afraid his father would kick him out and he would have to live on the streets. He wasn't quite sure what that would constitute, and he was pretty certain that it wouldn't actually happen, and that his mother would prevent it, but he was still possessed by the vague idea of living and surviving on his own, and the idea that it would be hard and terrifying.

Sometimes he yearned for that existence, completely earned, completely alone.

Mycroft had gone white at dinner when Sherlock spoke, and there had been no words exchanged between the two since. Sherlock knew his brother must have known on some level what their father was doing, and that Sherlock's words had shattered something, like a precious vase or one of his mother's skulls, something fragile and unique and utterly irreplaceable, something that would never be repaired (ever after, he was so, so careful with vases and teapots and skulls and other irreplaceable things).

Dr. Compton was a friend of his father, from when his father had worked at the hospital, doing surgeries. Dr. Compton, Sherlock knew, had himself had an affair, recently ended, and he was bitter. He was also bitter because in medical school, he had been quite enamored of Emily Marlow, his flatmate's girlfriend, and of course she had chosen Oliver over him, without a thought. She also thought that psychology, even psychiatry, lacked a significant basis in science. She had been, still was, beautiful and a genius and arrogant about it, and Dr. Compton had never forgiven her her arrogance. And now, every Tuesday, he saw it mirrored in the strange, exotic face of her son, so little trace of Oliver evident in the boy as to make him nearly a clone of Emily. A clone who was young and small and in his father's bad graces, a boy without a doctorate or anyone to back him up when his eyes said before his mouth that psychology was _stupid_.

As both a psychologist and a psychiatrist with the hospital, Dr. Compton had quite a lot of authority. As a close friend of Oliver Holmes, MD, MP, he had certain responsibilities—or, if not responsibilities, expectations, of discretion and of limitation in which disorders might be acceptable diagnoses for Sherlock.

Regrettably, children under eighteen couldn't be diagnosed as psychopaths or sociopaths, and Sherlock certainly didn't have conduct disorder. He'd been in only two fights, both of which had been clearly provoked by other children. He didn't steal, or he'd never been caught. He was rarely, if ever, impulsive, and if he was he was so good at thinking on his feet that it was impossible to tell. Besides which, conduct disorder was not something that was acceptable for the son of a rising MP to have. It wasn't _sympathetic_. It didn't _play well_.

On the table was the autism spectrum, attention deficit, and learning disabilities. There was no evidence for the last, and while Sherlock paid attention only to the things Sherlock decided were worthy of his attention, it was hardly that he was incapable of sustaining attention; he could stare at a bubbling beaker for hours, or focus for aeons on his violin scales. And it was 1992. The Autism Diagnostic Interview had been published the year before. Autism as a spectrum disorder had just been included in the DSM-IV. The next year, diagnoses of autism would begin to increase at an unimaginable rate.

Dr. Compton handed Oliver an autism spectrum disorder diagnosis for Sherlock, not otherwise specified. It was a sympathetic narrative, the MP with the difficult, disordered son, after his brilliant, poised brother. The family struggle.

In fact, Dr. Compton hinted, if Oliver ever felt the need to put Sherlock away—a wrenching decision, of course—a few interviews, with the family psychologist and friend included as witness to the severity of the disorder and the pain inherent in the family's difficult decision—it would not be detrimental to Oliver's political career.

Oliver replied, thoughtfully, that no, it wouldn't, but it would be detrimental to his marriage.

Emily was difficult, too.

Sherlock was sitting in the waiting room, listening to this exchange, trying to retain his belief in the world as a largely secure place, in his mother as a force and power for good in his life, in his father as not-evil.

It wasn't working. Sherlock Holmes was terrified out of his twelve-year-old mind. He didn't know, really, what it meant to be 'put away' other than to be out of use, shelved, out of mind, unimportant and utterly dismissed. It meant to be away from his mother and his books and his experiments. It meant, he was well aware, to be locked up and to be more controlled even than an ordinary child.

Sherlock thought, furiously, in terror and horror, of running away.

But he was home-schooled; his best friend was his mother, and his only other resource, his wise older brother, who knew what he truly was and until That Dinner had seemed to care anyway, wasn't speaking to him.

He really had nowhere to go.


End file.
